What follows are short pieces that I wrote at various times on the grieving path. They were attempts to understand the world in which I now lived and a life I could no longer recognize.
We have become citizens of a new world. One night, during our sleep, we were evicted from the world that we knew and loved and had lived in all our lives. We found ourselves in a land where nothing was familiar.
We recognized no landmarks and without compass or map, felt disoriented and confused. We had no tools, no skills, no language and no desire to be there. So we started walking in search of warmth, shelter and survival.
Along the way we were able to fashion a few tools from the scraps we had been allowed to bring from our past life and we managed to learn a thing or two, some from books and some the hard way. We hope it’s enough to buy us some time.
So here we are in a world not of our choosing, where peace of mind, comfort and happiness are only memories from another life, and going home is not an option as our old world is gone. So we walk on, certain that we’ll be walking for the rest of our lives. But we are grateful to be moving out of the deep, dark woods of profound, new grief and moving towards the more light-filled open meadows of the future where we hope to rebuild our lives and regain some peace, some comfort and some happiness. It will never feel like the home we knew and loved, but it’s all we have now.
The Grieving Path 